Call it a hunch

These aren’t the best of times for US Soccer. With the exception of two wins over Mexico, there hasn’t been a whole lot to cheer about from the US National Team over the last calendar year. The Copa America was an unmitigated disaster and USSF president Sunil Gulati should be taken to task on why he chose to send an experimental team that succeeded only in reaffirming the world’s perception of American soccer – that it isn’t any good. Factor in an unexpected loss by the Under-20’s against Austria in the quarterfinals of a tournament we legitimately had a chance of winning and the current results from the Under-17 World Cup in Korea (4-3 loss to Tajikistan and 3-1 loss to Tunisia. Yes, Tajikistan and Tunisia), and it’s hard not to argue that US Soccer could soon be undergoing radical changes.



My stance on Gulati is well-documented – or at least I thought it was, but I seem to be missing an old post on why Gulati bit the bullet on waiting forever to not hire Jurgen Klinsmann. A brief recap: the four years in between World Cups isn’t as long as it may seem, and losing time by not hiring a coach forced the team to miss six months without any direction. Worse yet, Gulati backed into it by naming Bob Bradley as an interim coach, further showing that he had little confidence in Bradley and not hiding the fact that he wanted to make a sexy, big-name hire. And wasting another six months, so were now up to a year. Bradley ran with the job as if it were permanent, much to his credit and lack of ego (after Bruce Arena, it was a nice change), and the results and fan pressure – and the lack of interest from bigger names – meant the job was all Bradley’s. We were happy – Bradley was the right man for the job, and through the Gold Cup victory celebrations, there wasn’t any reason to complain.

I’m not waffling on Bradley as the guy to lead the US team – I like him, and I like his approach to leading the team. He seems to have a knack for making do with what’s in front of him. Problem is, there just isn’t a lot in front of him for him to ultimately succeed, and that’s going to be his downfall. And that’s why I have a hunch that Sunil Gulati will be using this losing skid in American soccer as an excuse to make drastic changes, beginning with the top and working his way down to the youth programs.

It’s no secret Gulati wants to make American soccer better; nobody can fault him for that. It’s also no secret that he believes we need to look beyond our borders to make that happen; nobody can really fault him for that, either. If there was a time when he could point to a couple results and make his point, now’s probably the time.

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